Voice response units enable users to access information using a conventional telephone. The interaction between the users and the voice response unit includes various voice prompts output by the voice response unit and responses thereto, for example, via the telephone keypad, by the user. Voice response units are used by service providers, such as banks and credit card companies, to fully or partially automate telephone call answering or responding to queries. Typically a voice response unit provides the capability to play voice prompts including recorded voice segments or speech synthesized from text and to receive responses thereto. The voice prompts are generally organized in the form of voice menus invoked by state tables. A state table can access and play a voice segment or synthesize speech from given text. The prompts are usually part of a voice application that is designed to, for example, allow a user to query information associated with their various accounts.
Further, voice response units are used in a variety of applications today to resolve customer problems and questions in conjunction with customer service representatives. In a financial service industry, such voice response units often provide users general information via one or more automated messages. Usually, the user is also given the option to either bypass an automated message or after the automated message has concluded to interact with a customer service representative in order to receive more detailed information tailored to an account of the user.
For example, an account holder may present his or her card, such as a debit card, an automated teller machine (“ATM”) card, a credit card or a smart card, to a merchant or to an ATM only to have the transaction denied. The merchant or the ATM may or may not give a reason for the declined transaction. In any event, even if a reason is given, the reason tends to be insufficient. Thus, the account holder thereafter contacts the respective company administering the card and, more particularly, the voice response unit of the respective company, to determine, for instance, why the transaction was denied and/or how to eliminate such an occurrence from happening again. The account holder receives very little information, if any, from the automated messages provided by the voice response unit, but rather must speak with a customer service representative to receive information about the recently declined transaction. As a result, since such account holders would rather speak with a customer service representative because the information provided via automated messages is not sufficient, the appropriate action cannot be taken through interaction with automated messages and/or lack of patience navigating through several automated messages to find out the necessary information, there is an overload of calls that must be serviced by customer service representatives. Consequently, companies, such as credit card companies, incur tremendous expenses in having to handle these calls with customer service representatives, as opposed to having the calls handled solely through the voice response unit.
Accordingly, a need exist for a system and a method which presumes a caller has contacted a voice response unit because of a recent transaction decline and, as a result, routes the caller along a predetermined path of automated messages tailored to the specific reason for the transaction decline.